Teachers of ECEC (Early Childhood Education and Care) employ unique teaching styles characterized by their individual approaches. This study was investigated teachers' formative factors in group activity. The researcher videotaped blocks of 1-1.5 hours of interaction between a number of children and teachers at daycare centers, from November 2011 to November 2012. The resulting narrative data was collected and analyzed through the SCAT and TEM (this is qualitative analysis method). The teachers' three teaching styles were found in this study. As a common point of previous study, daycare teachers' teaching styles has similar bifurcation point as trouble scene. Specially, conflict point is hiding or not hiding of teachers' intentions.

In recent years, shadowing has been garnering attention in Japanese language education. It has been shown that by introducing shadowing in classroom instruction, the speech perception, pronunciation, and listening comprehension ability of language learners can be improved. Japanese (the geminate consonant, the long sound) are considered difficult for native Chinese speakers at the beginner and intermediate levels. This study examined whether learners' skills in perception and production of Japanese special phonemes can be improved through shadowing practice. The investigation was carried out over the course of three months among eight Japanese language learners from a Chinese L1 background. The study investigated the improvement of the perception and production of assimilated and long sounds in vocabulary and basic sentence learning. The improvement period and changes were also investigated. According to the results of the pretest, posttest, as well as the delayed posttest, it was found that the production of both assimilated and long sounds improved slightly. Delayed posttest results indicate that the improvement was maintained at a comparatively high level, suggesting that the positive effects of shadowing practice may be long term.

Through review of the case method of instruction, which is often mentioned in discussions of active learning, this study aims to identify the realization process at education sites based on cases at institutions of higher education. For this purpose, four practice cases were selected from higher education institutions in Japan; cases which individually satisfy both the essential criterion of having observable outcomes while also as a whole represent diverse examples. In this study, the realization process of the case method in individual cases is investigated by means of reports, on-site observation and interviews. Analysis reveals that the process of individual instructors mastering the case method lies at the core of realizing case method of instruction. The process of becoming proficient closely relates to the process of establishing the case method in education programs. The study also clarifies that such processes are supported by instructor teams' initiatives at education sites following decisions by organizations to adopt the case method as well as by highly competent team leadership. The difficulty of realizing the case method of instruction lies in interrelated factors that must be put in place at educational institutions intending to practice the method. Unless these interrelated factors are continually and comprehensively satisfied, successful educational practices cannot be established.

Hypothetically defining the essay as an abductive genre oriented toward discourse, this paper illustrates how it is possible to resolve problems related to the concept of the essay in traditional Japanese language education research. More specifically, it focuses on three problems. First, although an essay is generally considered to be a logical genre of writing, it is sometimes also identified as an illogical style. Second, the difference between essays and other genres remains unclear. Finally, the reason for the presence of paradoxical expressions in essays has not been explained in adequate detail. In the future, it may be possible to explain the division of expository text and the significance of reading essays in Japanese language education from the results of this paper.

This article casts doubt on the current tendency of high school English language teachers to ask questions which require the understanding of the meaning of passages (i.e. comprehension questions) in reading classes. The author concedes that the tendency has not emerged without reason; it is in accordance with the communicative orientation of the English language teaching in Japanese schools in that those questions are intended to direct learners' attention to the content or message that the text carries. However, those questions are based on the specific content of a particular text, and thus less likely to help the students acquire generalizable linguistic skills applicable to different texts. In seeking alternative ways of question making, the author refers to the teaching of Japanese as the first language as an advanced model in terms of its primary focus on language, as observed in the national course of study. Based on the implications from Japanese language teaching, the author proposes a distinction between content questions and form questions, and he argues that the latter is more effective in developing students' generalizable linguistic skills. A report from a reading class which utilized form questions supports the case for varying question types in teaching reading.